


Drummer

by tigers_bedtime



Category: Last of the Mohicans (1992)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-20 01:56:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1492441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigers_bedtime/pseuds/tigers_bedtime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alice at the promontory:  now, what is clear is her childhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drummer

**Author's Note:**

> Backdated work [2007]

Gutted; red rocks. 

Now, what is clear is her childhood.

A distant father returned from war errands and he would set her on his lap. She was reassured by his stiff uniform, rough hands, grim eyes; his whole hard countenance. He brought with him the scents of war – gunpowder, earth (strange to be so comforting to a little girl!). He loved her best. This was never for Cora. Cora was older and less affectionate, occupied with her own sovereignty; she the intrepid disillusionist. Alice is the bruised; Cora the calloused.

“ _Oh, Cora, you do always get your way_ ,” or “ _Oh, Alice, stop being so timid and impressionable_.” As they waltzed in circles inside the world in which they were bred.  


She used to draw birds in the margins of her French primer. VVVV

When she was fourteen she fancied a soldier newly enlisted, so delicately handsome in his uniform. She did not cry when he died.

Once Alice helped in the infirmary, spending a night with the mutilated, the rotting. She had done her best. When she left, she tore off her dress and scrubbed her skin to numbness; later burned her blood- and sweat-stained clothes. Bravery chooses who to seize; she has never been ashamed for what she lacks.

She looks at his blood and thinks, What a family! Two English roses for two heathens, brothers for sisters, and one father (for the others were gone). Someday there would have been a little girl with eyes which haunted. There would have been a fierce and fragile little boy.

Here she stands, her clothes not as stained as the hand that is being offered.

The night of her fever at Fort William Henry she dreamt. In her dream she sat upright in bed, naked, in a light-less room. Then she felt a finger slide down the middle of her back, cutting it in two. She woke up knowing it was him.

On their journey he had been teaching her words, mostly nouns, what is tangible. He would point and say _mkhook-que-thoth_ , owl; _wastachquaam_ , tree. It is not his English that prevents him from speaking further, but rather his stillness.

Most of all, she does not want to have ever thought, ‘I would have come for you.’

Her heart pulses a furious rhythm both pagan and classical, the voice telling her to _run run run run run_. What that feels like – loose, concentrated, inevitable.

While what they share has that mix of carnality, of raw sweetness, a tragic young love with much left undone, it transcends far beyond such an idea. It is as if they have lived it all before this moment. Already made love, shared a home, grieved, and died. Every time they make contact, a new memory combusts in front of them; hangs.

That is why, she wishes for Cora to know, that she can die, too. Because she has aged profoundly, spent and ached eighty years in her seventeen, and she is so, so tired, and ready to rest.


End file.
